Saturday 2 April 2011

CHEESECAKE!!

Making cheesecake without cheese may sound a difficult task, but I think it may actually be easier to make than normal cheesecake!
Like i've said before, I'm terrible at recipes as I don't generally use them, but I'm going to do the best I can and attempt to go through the stages of how it's made, because it's just that awesome that I hope you all go try it!

For the base, I just use some kind of vegan digestive or oat biscuit. Vegan digestives are harder to find, so I tend to go for the oat biscuit instead - hobnobs, for example. Then mix this in with melted non-dairy margarine.
If you don't have a blender, you can do the classic old trick of filling a sandwich bag with biscuits and just literally hammering it against a table until they get suitably crushed. Otherwise, just throw a load of biscuits in a blender.

There are two main varieties of cheesecake I make; choc-orange, and summer fruits. Today, I made the latter.

For the filling, I mix a whole block of silken tofu (and it must be silken tofu) in a blender with almost a whole tub of plain vegan cream cheese, the juice of half a lemon, about a tablespoon of agave nectar, and the relevant other ingredients; in this case, (defrosted!) frozen summer fruits.
While it's very much not the best vegan cream cheese, I usually use tofutti for this because of it's slightly sweet flavour.

You basically just squish the base right into a cake tin, and smooth out the top with the back of a spoon, then pour in the filling.


You then put it in the oven at around 180 degrees for about 25-30 mins, until it looks like this:

You then leave it to cool for about half an hour, then put it in the fridge until it's completely cool and set.
Meanwhile, you make the topping, which is a kind of summer fruit compote. I make this with the same frozen fruit as the filling, but lots of it, with water and agave nectar, and mix-in some raspberry jam, with a small sprinkle of agar flakes - agar is a sea vegetable that works as a vegan gelling agent. You can generally find it in independent health food shops. It's pretty expensive, but you only need a little of it. Otherwise, try pectin, or 'vege-gel'.

Once the cheesecake is set, run a clean knife around the edges to loosen it, then push up the base of the cake tin (FYI; if you don't have a cake tin, just cook it in some other kind of circular tin/glass dish and serve it out of that). A nice little tip for putting it on a plate neatly: put a plate upside-down over the top of it, then turn it upside-down. Then, you can take the metal cake tin plate off the bottom and replace it with a plate, then flip it back over.

Then, you put the compote on top and spread it with a knife. I like to serve it with soya whipping cream. I don't actually bother whipping it because it never seems to make much of a difference and it's got a nice thickness as it is.

The final cheesecake looks like this. The inedible-looking blueness is nothing to worry about, it's thanks to the blueberries!

Jen x

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